


still got a lot of fight left in me

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: this is my fight song [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Family Reunions, Gen, Resurrection, Reunions, handwavey magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4504521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JONATHAN MURDOCK,<i> the fallen gravestone reads, in big, fancy letters, and there's a cold, cold weight in Jack's stomach when he sees it, when he runs his hand over it and smears blood across his name.</i> A Good Man.</p>
<p>or: one of Wanda Maximoff's energy blasts collides with a spell fired by a love-crazed sorceress in your typical Avengers-level battle, somewhere near Hell's Kitchen. the resulting wave of energy manages to resurrect several thousand people in three cemeteries. one of those newly brought back from the dead? Battlin' Jack Murdock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	still got a lot of fight left in me

**Author's Note:**

> makes a lot of sad pitiful noises. this is the first of _yet another_ series, because I've fallen into the Daredevil dumpster and I can't get out.
> 
> title (and series title) comes from Rachel Platten's "Fight Song". it's very, very good.

Turns out, bringing the Scarlet Witch along in an epic battle against a crazed sorceress trying to bring back her dead husband is--not the best idea the Avengers have ever had, to put it tactfully.

Because Wanda Maximoff is _powerful_ , so much so that when a particularly potent energy blast meets a particularly powerful spell, the resulting energy wave that pulses out from the epicenter knocks all the Avengers off their feet, or, in the case of the ones airborne, knocks them out of the sky and sends them careening into their fellow Avengers.

It also washes over three different cemeteries nearby, knocking over gravestones and trees and, in some cases, people visiting the graves of their loved ones.

That's when things get _weird_.

\--

If there's one thing Jack Murdock did not expect to do in his lifetime, it's waking up in a coffin underground and having to claw his way out of it.

But sometimes life cheats and hits below the belt, and this one's definitely below the belt. Jack shakes his bloodied hands out, pulls himself out of the grave. It looks old, apparently so old that the gravestone's fallen over, and Jack sucks in a lungful of fresh air and dusts his--

Wait.

This is not the jacket he was wearing.

_What the fuck,_ he thinks. He stands up, then gets a good, long look at the fallen gravestone.

_JONATHAN MURDOCK_ , it reads, in big, fancy letters, and there's a cold, cold weight in Jack's stomach when he sees it, when he runs his hand over it and smears blood across his name. _A Good Man._

"Weird, right?" a young girl's voice comes from behind him, and Jack lets out a surprised yelp and twists around, to see a young girl, with a black headband in her golden hair. Her hands are bloodied too, and shaking, but she's admirably calm. "Looking at your own gravestone. Kinda morbid, too."

"The hell?" Jack manages, getting to his feet. "What--What's going on? And--shit, Matty, where's--"

" _Not here_ ," the girl interrupts, blocking his way.

"You don't get it, he's waiting up for me, he must've listened to my match!" Jack says. "I gotta go see him--"

"Your match?" the girl asks, confused.

"Yeah," says Jack, "up against Creel--"

"Wait," says the girl. "You don't mean--Crusher Creel?" Her eyes widen, and she grabs on to his shoulders and looks him up and down. "Creel's _dead_ ," she says.

"What?"

"He's dead," she repeats. "How do you not know that?"

"He can't be," says Jack, trying to squirm out of the girl's grip. "I just--I just _knocked him out_ , I saw him, he can't be _dead_ \--"

"He's been dead for _years_ ," says the girl, and that's definitely throwing Jack. He tries to push past her, but she gets in his way again, and says, "Look, I know--I know this is insane and you're panicking, trust me, I think this is insane too, and I'm _freaking out_ , but Carl 'Crusher' Creel died years ago. By the looks of it you did too."

"I'm not--" he starts, then stops. What other explanation is there for the fallen gravestone with his name on it? For the fancy clothes he didn't know he owned? For waking up six feet under with the smell of death in his nose? _Oh, god, I left Matt alone._

"I know," says the girl. "What year was it?"

"1997," Jack says, automatically. "Why?"

"When I died, it was 2013," the girl says. "I don't know what year it is now, but I'm guessing it's been a while."

"You'd be right," another voice calls, and Jack and the girl turn to look at where it's from. There's a man in a black coat and a close-cropped hairstyle and fancy clothes (dead person clothes, and now Jack can see nearly everyone in this cemetery's wearing dead person clothes, just how _many_ of them were brought back?), stepping lightly over a fallen gravestone. "It's 2015."

It's 2015. It's 2015, and Jack's not dead, and Matt's 27 and he's been alone for nearly twenty years, and Jack--

Jack needs to _go_ , he has to _see_ his boy, so he pushes past the girl ("hey!" she huffs, affronted) and makes for the exit. It's crowded, but he'll push past it, he has to. Matt's out there, older now, and he has to _see_ \--

"Hey!" the man says, grabbing his arm. "You're not going out there. Not yet." He nods to the exit, swarmed with people trying to get out of the cemetery.

"But Matt's out there!" Jack protests, pulling his hand away from the guy's grip. "I gotta go find him--"

"Matt?" says the guy, brow furrowing. "By any chance, you know a Matt Murdock?"

"Yeah," says Jack, stunned. "Yeah, he's--he's my kid."

"Not much of a kid anymore," says the guy. "He's a lawyer now. Smart boy you raised there."

Jack stares at the man for a moment. His little boy, a lawyer, making something of himself. He breaks into a grin. "Yeah," he says, "the smartest kid I ever knew."

\--

The news breaks while they're in the office, is the thing.

Karen's making coffee when she hears Foggy fall off his chair in the other room, and she turns her head to see him slamming the door open and marching over to Matt's office with an incredibly worried look on his face.

She follows him in with a cup in her hand, just in time to catch Foggy saying, "and--you know the cemetery, the one we go to every year? The one where your dad's buried? _That_ was one of the affected ones--we gotta go--"

"You can't possibly be saying that," says Matt, and even with his eyes hidden behind his glasses she knows he's trying to rein in his anger, "why--why would _anyone_ want to do that, who'd _raise the dead_ \--"

"I don't know!" Foggy near-shouts.

Matt flinches.

"Sorry," Foggy says, his volume a little lower. "I mean, near as I can figure it was an accident."

"What's going on here?" Karen asks.

"The dead are coming back," says Foggy, completely serious. "And apparently not as brain-eating zombies! Which is great, because I would be a delicious zombie snack. Probably." He coughs, pulls out his phone and swipes downward, then adds, "Press statement from the Avengers says it _was_ an accident, they were fighting somebody trying to resurrect one person and accidentally resurrected about several thousand people in three cemeteries."

"Wow," says Karen. "I'm glad they don't want to eat us, then."

"And apparently, the cemetery my dad was buried in is one of them," says Matt, running a hand through his hair. "I keep _telling_ them--"

"Wait," says Karen, cutting in before Matt can start in on how the Avengers should really keep out of Hell's Kitchen, "is it the same one we buried Ben in?"

Matt nods.

"We need to go," says Karen, her stomach tying itself into knots. Ben is dead, but he's alive, and she has to--she has to talk to him, apologize, tell him how Doris is doing, tell him they put Fisk away for good. He has to _know_. " _Now_."

\--

They sneak out through a hole in the fence, instead of taking the crowded exit like everyone else. "Thank you, horny teenagers," Gwen--the girl, with blonde hair and a black headband who died of a snapped neck, from what she says--quips, the last to crawl out.

"And ghost hunters," Ben--the man in the black coat, who says he was strangled to death--mutters.

Jack doesn't say anything. He looks around, sees new buildings in place of the old, familiar haunts he used to know, graffiti displaying a red and gold mask-thing melting into red, red blood (JUSTICE, reads the angry bold letters underneath), and says, "The hell happened here?"

"I'm surprised you noticed," says Ben, "there was an alien invasion a few years back. 2012, nearly wiped Hell's Kitchen off the map." He waves a hand to the red-and-gold mask, and says, "That would be Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man. Darling of New York just a few years ago after he flew a nuke into the portal the aliens were coming from, but I'm guessing he had a hand in something bad."

"You're kidding," Jack flatly says. _Alien invasions_ , Jesus Christ. What kind of world has he woken up in that someone can say that with utter seriousness?

"There was, actually," says Gwen. "I mean, we didn't get as badly hit, but there was still some damage done." She digs her hands into her pockets, out of habit, before she takes them back out again. "I'd show you, but I wasn't buried with my phone," she says.

"Why would you need a phone to show me?" Jack asks.

"A lot of things changed since 1997," says Ben, grabbing on to Jack's arm. "Now, if I'm not wrong and they haven't changed location while I was dead, Nelson & Murdock is this way."

\--

There's a crowd at the entrance, when Matt, Karen and Foggy get there. Matt can tell, because he can hear a hundred, a thousand, _too many_ distinctive heartbeats to count, all of them beating fast with panic and worry and shock, as the police officer--at least he assumes whoever's talking is a police officer, they've got the authority in their voice--is trying to direct them towards a church, trying to maintain order over a crowd full of newly-resurrected people, most of them no doubt experiencing some degree of disorientation and shock.

"Do you see anyone we know?" Karen asks, worriedly.

"Don't know, it's hard to make them out," says Foggy. "Matt, you have that--weird heartbeat-sensing thing you do. Is there anyone we know in that crowd?"

"It's a _crowd_ ," says Matt, long-suffering. There are limits to his abilities like everything else, as he keeps telling Foggy, but he doesn't always get that. "It's easy to pick out heartbeats if, say, they're calm and few in number. These people are not calm, and there were, at the very least, seven hundred people or so buried here."

"But if you knew that heartbeat really, really well--" Karen starts.

"It still wouldn't help," says Matt. "The best thing we can do is head to the church, see if anyone we know is there--"

" _Señor Foggy!_ " someone calls--a familiar voice, one Matt didn't think he'd hear again.

"Oh my god," says Foggy, grabbing on to Matt's arm, shock and relief intermingling in his tone. "Matt, Mrs. Cardenas is waving at us, she's--she's okay!" He raises his voice, shouting, "Mrs. C! Over here!"

"Elena!" Karen shouts. " _Estamos aquí!_ "

"And you didn't even need to use me for that," Matt remarks, amused. “ _Señora Cárdenas, hola, se encuentra bien?_ ”

“ _Estoy bien, Señor Murdock,_ ” says Mrs. Cardenas, peeling away from the crowd, funeral shoes tapping frantically against the pavement. Her heartbeat comes quick and fast, but when she’s just in front of them it starts to relax, and she sucks in a lungful of breath like she can’t believe she _can_. Between the shock of dying violently and suddenly waking up in a narrow area underground, it’s understandable. “ _Lo ultimo que recuerdo es el dolor y la muerte viniendo por mi, ¿como es que estoy viva?_ ” she asks.

“Blame the Avengers,” Foggy mutters. “I mean--uh, _es one historia muy_ , um, _largo?_ ” He coughs, then whispers to Matt, “That’s the Spanish for long, right?”

“ _Larga,_ ” Matt corrects. “Also, your accent’s horrible.”

“Is not!” Foggy protests, and Matt nudges his side with his elbow. “Ow--Punjabi’s _easier_ \--”

“Says the man who nearly failed his Punjabi class,” Matt mutters.

“ _Le explicaremos todo cuando lleguemos a la oficina,_ ” Karen says, taking Mrs. Cardenas’ elbow. “ _Pero por el momento le tengo excelentes noticias, Elena_.”

“Oh, _por fin el Señor Foggy y tu son novios_?” Mrs. Cardenas asks, and Matt claps a hand over his mouth and turns the laugh that bubbles involuntarily out of him into a cough.

“ _Lo siento, pesque un resfriado la semana pasada_ ,” he says.

"Right," says Karen, her tone utterly skeptical. "A cold." _You are such a terrible liar,_ she doesn't say, but he can hear the tone of her voice and infer from there.

“You are such a liar,” Foggy hisses, giving voice to Karen's silent accusation as they fall in step behind her and Mrs. Cardenas. “ _Such_ a liar, Murdock, last week you _broke a rib_.”

“ _Bruised_ a rib,” Matt says, lying. It still hurts like a bitch, but it’s not like he has to let Foggy know about that. And his dad--oh, god. “You guys go on,” he says, quickly. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Where are you going?” Foggy asks. “I mean, we gotta tell Mrs. C about what happened while she was--” He cuts himself off, then says, “Away.”

“While she was dead, you mean,” Matt says. “I’m just going to the church. See if anyone else we know has turned up. It should be calmer than the graveyard, at any rate.”

“Don’t fall down a manhole,” says Foggy, absently, and Matt can’t stop himself from smiling, doesn’t want to.

"Please," he says, "I'm more careful than that."

"Yeah, _right_ ," Foggy snorts, then walks away, quickening his pace to catch up with Karen and Mrs. Cardenas. Matt stays there for a moment, then turns back to the graveyard. So far so good, and he starts tapping his way down the sidewalk and towards the church.

\--

Nelson & Murdock, as it turns out, is a very tiny law firm, small enough to fit into a very cramped office space. It also has the most easily-jimmied lock in history, or so Ben claims once he jimmies it open with a paperclip from downstairs and lets them both in.

"You know," says Gwen, "I expected something more--sleek. Soulless. You know, like _lawyers_."

Jack coughs. "Watch it," he says, and Gwen holds up her hands. The blood's dried, he notices, but it's covered in dirt and grime.

"Sorry," she says. "It's just, my dad was in the police." Which explains a lot, really.

"No harm done," Ben says, dryly, heading into the kitchenette.

"Wash your hands," Jack tells her, looking at one of the open offices. Matt's, he thinks--there are papers in Braille stacked neatly on the desk, a laptop (a very thin, very sleek one), and a notepad with absurdly messy handwriting.

He steps closer, stopping at the doorway. This is his son's office. This is his son's life, and he's been out of it for nearly twenty years and--is there any making up for that? Probably not, he's missed _twenty years_ when he should've been there--

"Either of you drink coffee?" Ben calls from the kitchenette, and Jack steps away from the office. Gwen's quicker than him, and she's in the kitchenette in no time flat, washing up her hands and badgering Ben about putting sugar in hers.

"Black," says Jack.

"Your funeral," says Ben. Jack snorts out a laugh, just as Gwen chuckles softly to herself as she shakes her hands, sending droplets everywhere. “So--Battlin’ Jack Murdock, wasn’t it?”

Jack nods, moving over to replace Gwen once she’s done washing her hands. The water stings against his fingers, but soon enough his hands are mostly clean. The sink, however, is a different story, the white porcelain now stained a dirty, muddy red. “Yeah,” he says.

“Heard a lot about you,” says Ben. “Mostly from the papers. Your boy didn’t say much about you to me, but then again, we weren’t really close.”

“Wasn’t he the kid who got his eyes knocked out saving that old guy?” Gwen asks, and holds up her free hand. The other one’s got a tight hold on the handle of a mug that reads _Lawyers Never Lose Their Appeal_ , with a faded scribble of an avocado underneath.

Jack does not roll his eyes, but he does bite back a heated reply. “His eyes didn’t get _knocked out_ ,” he says instead.

Gwen sucks in a breath, glances down at her mug. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Can I blame the shock of coming back from the dead?”

“Only for today,” says Ben, dryly. “Here. Coffee’s terrible, but what can you do.”

The coffee is bitter--excessively so, and Jack has to force it down his throat. Strange, he should be used to bitter coffee by now, except--except he’s been dead near twenty years, hasn’t he, there’s a _lot_ of things that have changed over the years. Either coffee or Matt's tastes are among them. “So how’d you meet him? Matt, I mean,” he says.

Ben shrugs. “I met Karen Page first,” he says, nodding to the empty desk that greeted them when they came in. “She’s the secretary here. Good kid, too.” There’s a note of pride in his tone, a pride Jack recognizes--it’s the same pride he felt when he saw the sign out front, _Nelson & Murdock_. “Got caught up in something bad, but instead of hiding, she took it to me. She’s not the sort to let go of something once she’s got it in her teeth, no matter what it takes to hold on.”

“Reminds me of somebody,” Gwen says, sipping at her cup and making a face. “Aw, this is _terrible_.”

“Told you,” says Ben, just as the door opens and a voice drifts in, saying something in Spanish, then, “Did I get that right, Karen?”

“You got it so, so wrong,” says another voice. “Christ--sorry, Elena--I _know_ I locked the door--”

“You did,” says Ben, stepping out of the kitchenette. Jack steps out behind him, heart beating fast against his chest--

\--and doesn’t see his son. There’s an old woman staring at them in shock, and a younger one--blonde, blue eyes, must be the Karen Page Ben was talking about--and a man just behind, with dirty blonde shoulder-length hair and a shocked look on his face, and Matt’s nowhere in sight.

“ _Dios mio,_ ” the old woman whispers.

“ _Ben_?” Karen asks. “I--oh my god, you’re--”

“Alive,” says Ben. “Yeah, I’m just getting used to it again. Your coffee’s still terrible, by the way.”

“See,” says the man--Nelson, probably--his voice coming out slightly strangled, “told you.” He coughs, glances at Jack, and says, “And who’re you? I mean, you kinda look familiar.”

“I’m Jack,” Jack says. “Jack Murdock.” He gives Nelson a tight smile, and is greeted with a dropped jaw and a slow, disbelieving huff of breath. “You’re Nelson, right?”

“Foggy,” says Nelson. “Foggy Nelson.” He runs a hand through his hair, and says, “I’m guessing you’re here for Matt, then?”

Jack nods, says, “Thought I’d find him here.”

“Yeah,” says Foggy Nelson, “uh. He kinda went looking for you in the church.” He digs into his pocket, takes out what looks like a shiny, plastic brick, and Jack’s about to ask why he’s carrying that around when he presses-- _something_ , and. Well. Now he gets what Gwen meant, if that’s what a phone looks like today.

Speaking of Gwen--

“Hey,” she says, emerging from the kitchenette with her mug, “there’s no sugar left, we used it all up. Sorry.” She pauses, blinks at the three of them, and gives a casual wave.

“Right,” says Nelson. “What’s the dead teenaged daughter of the late Captain Stacy doing here?”

“Mooching off your coffee,” Gwen says. “Which sucks, by the way.”

“See?” Karen says. “It’s not my-- _technique_ , whatever that is, it’s just the coffeemaker, which _we really need to fix_ \--”

“Can I borrow your phone?” Jack asks, setting his mug aside on the table and cutting in before Karen can start on whatever else might be the problem with their coffee. “I just--I’ve got a call to make.”

“I’m already on it,” says Nelson.

\--

The second Matt walks into the church, he knows it’s a lost cause. It might be far less crowded than the graveyard, but he can’t hear his father’s familiar heartbeat, can’t pick it out amongst the other heartbeats and the conversations around him. He sniffs the air--it smells like blood and dirt, and he realizes that most of these people must’ve clawed their way out of their coffins.

His father must’ve clawed his way out of his coffin, must’ve panicked when he found himself in a six-foot wooden box underground, and Matt’s fingers tighten around his cane.

He’s going to give the Avengers _such_ a lecture when he sees them again. Probably worse. The Battle of New York was bad enough, he can’t imagine the issues--ethical and legal--that’s going to arise from all this happening.

Behind him, someone’s crying. A little girl, only five, and her fingers are digging into someone’s shirt, and she’s saying, _I woke up and I was all alone and it was dark, Papa, it was really dark, I was so scared_.

_Shh, baby,_ her father whispers, shock and relief woven into his tone. _Shh, baby girl, it’s okay, Daddy’s here now, I won’t leave, I’m sorry I did, I’m so sorry--_

His grip on his cane relaxes.

“Are you all right there, Matthew?”

Matt snaps himself out of his reverie, lets out a breath. “At least it’s not _The Walking Dead_ ,” he says, to Father Lantom, who sits down in the pew ahead of him, the wood creaking slightly under his weight. “I don’t suppose lattes are on the timetable?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Father Lantom says, with an audible sigh. “Sister Miriam commandeered the coffeemaker. It’ll be some time before lattes are back on the menu, things are going to be rather chaotic.”

Which is a shame, because the lattes here beat any other latte served anywhere else in the city, but Matt doesn’t say that. Instead he just says, “Something of an understatement, Father.” He lets out a breath.

“You’re looking for your father, aren’t you?” Father Lantom asks. “I heard that the cemetery he was buried in was one of those affected.”

“Did--” Matt starts, then stops. “Did he come here?” he asks.

“No,” says Father Lantom, kindly, his heartbeat steady. “I would think that the first thing--the _very_ first thing he’d do is look for you.”

Matt shakes his head, and says, “But--the last time he saw me I was nine, and we were living in an apartment just a few minutes away from Fogwell’s, and--” He stops, shakes his head. “He wouldn’t find me,” he says.

“I rather think he will,” Father Lantom remarks, just as Matt’s phone starts to ring, _Foggy, Foggy, Foggy_ breaking the relative silence and attracting attention.

_Goddammit,_ thinks Matt. Then he thinks, _I am so sorry,_ because this is a church, after all. “I should take this,” he says, standing up. “Thank you for your time, Father.”

“Any time, Matthew,” Father Lantom says, and Matt takes up his cane and taps his way out of the church. He should’ve turned off his phone, but Foggy _knew_ he’d be going down to the church, and he swipes his thumb across the screen and says, with irritation in his tone, “Really, Foggy? Tell me this is a break in the Allred case, because if not--”

“ _Matty?_ ”

Matt stops.

He knows that voice.

“Dad?” he whispers.

\--

“Yeah,” says Jack. Ben, Karen and the old woman--Mrs. Cardenas, just as newly-resurrected as Jack and Gwen and Ben--had gone out to catch up over lunch, and Gwen is talking with Nelson about the legal problems that are no doubt going to spring up for her, and for the rest of them, which leaves Jack sitting in a chair with a phone in hand. “Hey, uh--I had to borrow your friend’s phone. He said to say hi, by the way.”

“ _You met Foggy,_ ” says Matt-- _his_ Matt, his little boy, who sounds so grown up and yet so young, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “ _Did he tell you the butcher story yet?_ ”

“I got no idea what that is,” says Jack, honestly.

“ _You will soon enough,_ ” says Matt, sounding close to tears. “ _Dad, I--where were you? I’ve been looking all over for you._ ”

“I nearly did the same,” says Jack. “If Ben wasn’t around I’d have probably marched into our old apartment and scared the new tenant.”

“ _That’d be kind of hard to do,_ ” says Matt, “ _seeing as our old apartment building got blown up in the recent alien invasion. They built an art gallery over it, did you know?_ ” He pauses a moment, then adds, ruefully, “ _It sounds weird, I know, but trust me, it really did happen. And--you met Ben?_ ”

“He told me what happened,” says Jack. “He told me you were a lawyer now.” He sniffs, rubs at his eyes--there are hot tears pricking at the corners. “Always knew you’d make it, Matty. I’m proud of you.”

Matt makes a small, choked noise on the other end. " _Dad,_ " he says, " _I--where are you? I have so much I need to catch you up on, before Foggy gets a chance to tell you about our college years._ "

"I'm at your office," says Jack, wondering what sort of shenanigans did Matt get up to with his partner in his college years, and making a note to prod Nelson about it. "Matty--listen to me, I am _so proud_ of you. I think I'd be proud of you no matter what." If Matt hadn’t been a lawyer, he knows he would’ve still been proud of him, somehow. He wipes at his eyes again, lips turning upward in a small smile. "And I am so, so sorry I left you all alone."

" _Dad, it wasn't your fault,_ " says Matt, and there's a noise in the background, the sound of a cane tapping against pavement. " _You died, it wasn't like you walked out of the apartment intending never to come back. It wasn't your fault._ "

_But I knew I wouldn't come back,_ he doesn't say, _can’t_ say. He’s been dead, and Matt’s been alone--he wonders where Maggie’s been, if she heard his message and deleted it off her voicemail, if she heard him at all. “Still,” he says.

“Hey, Mr. Murdock,” says Nelson, opening the door and poking his head through the opening, “I gotta--”

“It’s Jack,” says Jack. “Mr. Murdock just sounds so-- _Mr. Murdock_.” He supposes that’s Matt’s now, anyway, and Jack’s fine with that. “Hey, Matty--”

“ _If Foggy asks, tell him I can’t get bagels, I’m taking a shortcut_ ,” says Matt, utterly deadpan. “ _Dad, I’ve got to go. Call you back._ ”

\--

When Matt climbs down from the fire escape, he smooths his suit down, runs a hand through his hair. Just a few blocks away, he can hear his father’s heartbeat, strong and steady and familiar, and his own heart is beating fast against his chest, threatening to leap into his throat at any moment.

_I’m proud of you._

He’s not sure if it’ll still be true, should his father find out about Daredevil. He’d never wanted Matt to step into the ring and fight, and--technically he _hasn’t_ stepped into the ring. Not a boxing ring, anyway. But he’s fought, bloodied his knuckles and broken bones, and he knows what it feels like to let the devil out and off its leash.

He knows his father won’t want him to fight, if he finds out. _If_ he finds out.

He’s lied to his father before. One more won’t matter, and besides--with over half of the police force gone or corrupt, with every two-bit thug with a gang trying to take advantage of Fisk’s incarceration to crawl out of the woodwork and try to take over, with the recent resurrections, he’s needed in that mask. Now more than ever, he’s sure.

_I’m proud of you,_ his father had said, and some part of Matt wonders if that’ll still hold true once he finds out everything Matt’s been hiding.

He doubts it.

He lets out a breath, straightens out his tie, then gets down on his knees and feels around underneath the dumpster, taking his cane out from under it and strolling out of the alley, tapping his cane along the sidewalk.

It takes him five minutes, tops, to get to the front door, and he can still smell the dried blood on the signage, where someone ran bloodied fingers over the raised letters. He steps inside and lets his feet carry him forward, up the stairs and into the corridor, to where the office door is.

He can hear his father’s heartbeat from here, steady and strong like oak, along with Foggy’s quicker heartbeat and somebody else’s, someone who smells like grave dirt as well. His hand hovers over the doorknob, hesitating, and Foggy’s voice carries over: _so Matt says to York, with this shit-eating grin, “but sir, we haven’t finished yet, and if it please the cactus--”_

“Tell me you’re not telling my dad about that time with the cactus and Professor York, Foggy,” says Matt, opening the door and smiling.

“Nah, I’m telling your dad _and_ Miss Stacy here about the time with the cactus and Professor York,” says Foggy. “It’s a Columbia legend, man! What kind of best friend would I be if I didn’t tell them all about it?”

“I’m starting to wish I was old enough to have gone,” Miss Stacy--and she sounds so _young_ , smells like grave dirt and the soap she must’ve used to wash off the blood on her hands--says, amusement in her tone, as she steps to the side.

“That mock trial was probably the most interesting thing that happened the whole semester in that class,” says Matt, trying for casual and falling flat. His father’s quiet, but his heartbeat is steady as always, and damn Matt’s words for failing him now, damn his throat for seizing up so he can hardly breathe, much less speak, and damn the Avengers for triggering this situation in the first place.

It’s been _eighteen years_. Matt’s a lawyer, he should know how to speak, but he can’t seem to find the words, here and now to his father. _Hi, dad_ is just--too casual, for this, and what _do_ you say to someone who's been dead for eighteen years? What do you tell them? Because Matt doesn't _know_ , and he doesn't trust himself to not start rambling, not right now.

It’s his dad who breaks the silence first, who croaks, “Hi, Matty,” and even here Matt can smell the salt of tears, the dirt of the graveyard.

He’s not sure who reaches for who first, but somehow they’re in the middle of the office, Matt’s hands gripping on tight to his father’s jacket, his father’s arms wrapped around him, and he’s _crying_ , like he’s nine again and skinned his knee trying to navigate in the street. Foggy and Miss Stacy have retreated into Foggy’s office, and Matt doesn’t know what he did to somehow deserve Foggy for a best friend, doesn’t think he does deserve that. Or this.

He can hear his father’s heartbeat again, steady and strong, and this close, it’s like it’s pounding right inside of his.

“It’s okay, Matty,” his father says, “it’s okay, I’m here now, I’m not gonna die again, promise.”

Matt holds on, and lets himself believe him.

\--

end.

**Author's Note:**

> for this prompt: "So Jack Murdock is alive again, due to reasons of magic or time-travel or whatnot. (Maybe the avengers have an epic fight with some magic user, and as a side-effect a couple hundred corpses from a specific cemetery are zombified and subsequently healed to aliveness again. Something that's not directly connected to Matt being Daredevil.)
> 
> And then lots of angst and awkward family feels happen. Because there's a difference between thinking your dad would maybe be proud of you and suddenly having him as a roommate.
> 
> On the one hand Matt is kind of giddy about having his dad back, on the other he really doesn't want to tell him about the whole Daredevil thing, and what if it turns out he's a disappointment after all? Meanwhile Jack is still reeling from the fact his little boy isn't a cute nine-year-old anymore."
> 
> \--
> 
> HERE ARE TRANSLATIONS, courtesy of a very kind anon on the kinkmeme. I love you bro.
> 
> _estamos aqui_ \- we're over here
> 
> _Señora Cárdenas, hola, se encuentra bien?_ \- hello, Mrs. Cardenas, are you all right?
> 
> _estoy bien_ \- I'm just fine
> 
> _Lo ultimo que recuerdo es el dolor y la muerte viniendo por mi, ¿como es que estoy viva?_ es one historia muy larga), but he's mangling it. as he usually does. Foggy Nelson: a law whiz, but terrible at languages.
> 
> _Le explicaremos todo cuando lleguemos a la oficina_ \- We'll explain when we get to the office
> 
> _Pero por el momento le tengo excelentes noticias, Elena_ \- But I have some very good news for you, Elena
> 
> _por fin el Señor Foggy y tu son novios?_ \- you and Foggy got together?
> 
> _Lo siento, pesque un resfriado la semana pasada_ \- I'm sorry, I got sick with a cold a week ago
> 
> _Dios mio_ \- my god


End file.
